Tagged: Vince Russo

On July 19, I sat at ringside at the DCU Center in Worcester — we locals still call it the Centrum — to watch the draft between WWE Raw and Smackdown. And one of the biggest surprises for me of the night was the crowd’s reaction to former three-time WWF Heavyweight Champion Bob Backlund.

If you don’t keep up with wrestling these days, 66-year-old Backlund is back on TV, playing the role of a coach to current WWE wrestler Darren Young. Backlund has even gone as far as to “allow” Young to use his old finisher, the cross-face chicken wing.

In Worcester, at one point during Young’s match, the crowd erupted into a chant: “Backlund! Backlund! Backlund!”

Recently on his blog, John Layfield, a.k.a. JBL, offered some history behind one of the worst gimmicks ever in WWE history: Terry Taylor as the Red Rooster.

Anyone who watched wrestling in the late 1980s will recall Taylor, dressed in his red tights and red ring jacket, with his hair teased up in a red mohawk. He also moved his neck like a hen when he came to the ring and even yelled out an occasional “cock-a-doodle-doo.”

I challenge anyone complaining about the WWE product today to find a dumber gimmick than the Red Rooster.